LinkedIn Tops Facebook for the Job Hunt: Bullhorn

A new report from recruiting software company Bullhorn found that while most people use Facebook to look for a new job, professional networking website LinkedIn and micro-blogging website Twitter are much better starting points for those in search of their next career.

Bullhorn, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, calls itself the “Global Leader in Online Recruiting Software”, using its recruiting software to manage over 150,000 job placements every month. Bullhorn analyzed the online practices of over 35,000 recruiters and found that 48 percent of them use LinkedIn alone, and don’t use their connections (661 on average) to leverage a social recruiting search on Facebook or LinkedIn. Recruiters have less connections on Twitter– 37 followers on average than they do on Facebook – 245 friends on average, but they use Twitter more than Facebook for recruiting.

Bullhorn report shows that Linked is the best place to conduct a job search.

Twitter surprisingly came out better than LinkedIn in one way: Twitter users were nearly three times as likely to apply for a job as a LinkedIn user, and eight times as likely to apply for a job as a Facebook user, providing evidence that recruiters would do well to cultivate Twitter as a social recruiting tool. Twitter also was responsible for twice as many job views as those on Facebook.

Other notable findings in Bullhorn’s 18 page report titled: “The Bullhorn Reach Social Recruiting Activity Report” show that recruiters who post jobs on LinkedIn are much more likely to get applications from users; nine times more applications are turned in compared to Facebook, and three time more than on Twitter, LinkedIn continues to grow at the fastest pace with the average recruiter adding 18.5 LinkedIn connections every month, compared to 3.3 for Twitter, and 1.4 for Facebook.

Bullhorn President and CEO Art Papas explained in a statement: “If you are serious about finding a job, Facebook should not be your first stop. There is a huge disconnect between where people are looking for jobs and where they will actually find one – job seekers are focusing on Facebook, while recruiters are on LinkedIn.”